Apple's Next iPhone: Facial-Recognition, All-Screen Design (theguardian.com)

Apple may have just revealed the features you could expect in the next iPhone. Last week, the company released the firmware of the HomePod, a smart speaker which it will begin selling later this year. In the code, the company has accidentally spilled some features about at least one of the iPhone models. Developer Steve Troughton-Smith looked at the code to find that the next iPhone is going to feature facial recognition and a brand new "bezel-less" design. From a report: The near bezel-less design has long been expected, with leaks and rumours suggesting that Apple was following Samsung's design moves with the Galaxy S8 and producing a smartphone that resembles Android-creator Andy Rubin's upcoming Essential phone. Apple is not the first company to use IR-based face recognition as a means of unlocking devices and authenticating users. Microsoft's Windows Hello IR-based face recognition is found in its Surface line as well as Windows 10 computers from other manufacturers.

Comments

Re:Great

[__aaclcg7560]

What's the best dumb flip-phone these days?

Tin can and string.

People don't buy iPhones because they're the first

[phayes]

Those prefacing the iPhone 8's arrival with "X already done here, Y already done there" are once again missing the point.

People don't buy Apple products because they're the first to market with an insignificant number of less than excellently integrated features.

People buy Apple products because when it's implemented in an iPhone/Mac/other it's done _well_ and can be bought in the tens of millions.

The original iPod was mocked upon it's release for not having the "essential features" some geeks considered essential yet sold in the hundreds of millions.

Same with the iPhone.

I'd trade it all

[Big Hairy Ian]

for a removable battery & a headphone socket

Re:Great

[halivar]

This post isn't called 'what phone should I buy?'

No one cares what phone you have.

Quoth the GP:

What's the best dumb flip-phone these days?

Re:Great

[__aaclcg7560]

You must be a CenturyLink customer.

Worse, a Sprint customer for 20+ years.

Re:Great

[Dog-Cow]

Apple already addressed the holding problem in iOS 11. Jobs may be dead, but that doesn't mean all the engineers and designers are drooling idiots. That's reserved for slashdot.

Re:Great

[Dog-Cow]

You had no idea that the company that built its fortune on tracking everything you do online was tracking you via a GPS receiver in your pocket? You have to be either the most naive or the most stupid person to grace the planet in the past 123423 millennia.

Security

[puddingebola]

Will they solve the problem of circumventing this technology with a photo of the person? Will law enforcement officials unlock your phone by holding it up to your face? When will they add a self destruct button for my phone?

Re:Security

[thegarbz]

This is a solved problem only repeated by Samsung's NIH approach. Android's default approach already requires an extra element (the user to blink), but that has also been defeated by flicking rapidly between pictures of a person with eyes open and with eyes closed. However many other vendors have taken an option to only scan on the IR spectrum. E.g. The Surface devices can't be defeated with a photograph, video or similar things. But I will bet you a Marsbar that apple doesn't do it because that would add yet another "unsightly" blemish to it's sacred front bezel in the form of another dot (IR LED) that you can see when you hold the device at a certain angle.

Mind you face-unlock doesn't work for anything secure on many devices. E.g. you can't use Samsung Pay or encryption with face-unlock.

Re:Security

[nine-times]

Will they solve the problem of circumventing this technology with a photo of the person?

I thought the idea was to have multiple front-facing cameras to get more of a 3D image of a person's face. If so, wouldn't that prevent a 2D photo from working? Still, I suppose someone could make a 3D model of your face. I'm not sure facial recognition can get around that problem, unless the facial recognition is able to scan for some level of detail that can't normally be reproduced.

Will law enforcement officials unlock your phone by holding it up to your face?

Any biometric ("something you are") is susceptible to this sort of thing. For a finger print scanner, what's to stop the police from sliding your thumb across it?

And to be fair, any kind of "something you have" authentication is possibly susceptible to the police confiscating your token. Even if the authentication is based on "something you know", there's a possibility that it might be learned by the police. For example, if the question is, "What's your mother's maiden name?" they might be able to look that up. Even if it's an arbitrary password, there's the possibility of torture, or using some other method to compel you to tell them.

Largely what protects us in society is that we have a set of rules, and enough transparency to know when someone is breaking those rules. If you want police to not be allowed to unlock your phone, one of the best things you can do is to work to create laws that classify that kind of search as illegal, and the evidence as inadmissible. Then, you should push for policies to make sure that police operations are performed in a transparent way, and that police are held accountable for any misdeeds.

Looking for a magical technology to prevent police abuse is a bit silly, especially if you're not willing to push for the laws and oversight to make sure police abuse is punished.

When will they add a self destruct button for my phone?

Do you mean a single, easily accessible button that will destroy all of the information on your phone? That'll never happen. There isn't enough demand to justify the inevitable shit-storm that will come when people start pressing it accidentally.

Re:People don't buy iPhones because they're the fi

[houghi]

Actually it is being the first one that makes a shitload of money is what is hard and counts.

Re:People don't buy iPhones because they're the fi

[phayes]

Apple sees your teeny tiny titters and laughs and laughs and laughs on their way to selling to people who do indeed care about design in 10s of millions of devices. But of course, for you that's just a sign of how deluded _they_ must be given that _they_ do not agree with _you_.

Should be Called the Shatterphone

[careysub]

Brilliant. To solve the non-problem of having a small bezel-case they will bring the glass screen to the very edge of the device to ensure that when you do drop it, even a short distance, it will shatter the screen.

Why is it that Apple execs think that the ultimate ideal form for every device is to be wafer-thin and all glass, sacrificing every other design consideration for that single obsession?

Re:Facial Recognition Is Why I Bought an iPhone 7

[careysub]

I recently bought an iPhone 6S, since I still use my headphone jack for all my headphones, and to plug into my car stereo. This may be my last iPhone if they don't stop this drive toward stupid design obsessions that leave out actual user needs and desires.

Re:Facial Recognition Is Why I Bought an iPhone 7

[jon3k]

Just curious what do you think someone will do with your fingerprint? If we assume worst case, somehow someone can get your fingerprint from your phone. Who is this person and what would they do with it that concerns you?

Re:People don't buy iPhones because they're the fi

[DontBeAMoran]

Drag and drop files? You're still managing your music as files? Ever heard of metadata and playlists? You don't know what you're missing.